NEW DELHI, Feb 22: Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri returned home on Thursday — a day earlier than the planned four-day visit during which he kept alive hopes for progress on key disputes between Islamabad and New Delhi despite the train bombing that threatened to overshadow the talks.

In his last engagement with journalists from India and Pakistan before he left for Islamabad late in the night, Mr Kasuri spoke at length about the Kashmir dispute and the way forward, which involved taking the opposition along.

Earlier in the day he grappled with both aspects of the issue, meeting the Kashmiri resistance on one hand and former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the other.

Some straws in the wind were evident from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s statement on Mr Kasuri’s meeting with former home minister Lal Kishan Advani on Wednesday.

“I have been influenced by (the) observation that the chances of Indo-Pakistan relations improving are maximum if the BJP comes to power,” Mr Advani told Mr Kasuri. “We demonstrated this during the six years of the NDA rule from 1998 to 2004. In fact, I shared this with President Musharraf when he came to New Delhi in 2005 after the UPA government assumed office.”

Mr Advani emphasised that, from the point of view of the Indian people, `the two most important issues affecting Indo-Pakistan relations are cross-border terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir. Our people will not accept any compromise on terrorism or any surrender on Jammu and Kashmir’.

Mr Kasuri was cautioned by the BJP against any haste in resolving the Kashmir issue, saying all eight issues on the table should progress together.

“Let us, therefore, make progress on all these various issues without attempting to arrive at a quick-fix solution to the Kashmir issue.”

In talks with Mr Kasuri, Lal Kishan Advani urged Islamabad to honour its commitment to `dismantle the infrastructure of cross-border terrorism’.

Mr Kasuri met a range of leaders from the Kashmir resistance who gave him a feel of the ground situation in the Valley. The Hurriyat Conference says no solution to Kashmir issue was possible `militarily’ and sought assistance from India and Pakistan to reduce red tape to facilitate meeting of Kashmiris across the Line of Control.

“The Hurriyat is of the firm opinion that the Kashmir issue cannot be solved militarily,” Hurriyat Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umer Farooq told reporters after his meeting with Mr Kasuri.

The Mirwaiz, during his recent visit to Islamabad, had talked about the futility of violence in solving the Kashmir issue, earning the ire of militant groups.

“We have also sought help to include the Kashmiris in the dialogue process and the Pakistani foreign minister has given us assurance to this effect,” the Mirwaiz said.

MEETING WITH KASHMIRIS: Earlier, Mr Kasuri had a brief meeting with JKLF Chairman Yaseen Malik and later with another Kashmiri resistance leader, Shabir Ahmed Shah.

Mr Kasuri’s visit was marred somewhat by allegations from the Pakistan camp that India had not allowed one of the Pakistanipatients, burned in the train disaster, to return home by a specialrelief plane that picked up seven people from the hospital.

Mr Kasuri said intelligence agencies of India and Pakistan will have to work together if South Asia is to “live in a civilised manner.”

Mr Kasuri, while talking to some TV channels in New Delhi, hoped India would share the outcome of the probe into the train blast before the March 6 meeting of Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism so that `meaningful contribution’ can be made to the fight against terror.

Asked whether intelligence agencies of the two countries could work together, he said: “They will have to if South Asia is to live in a civilised manner.”

He added that if both the governments `put their weight behind’ such an endeavour, it will work.